


even if it breaks your heart

by kadaransmuggler



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, angry dalish woman intent on reclaiming her culture, i'm not really sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-30
Updated: 2016-06-30
Packaged: 2018-07-19 03:55:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7343791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kadaransmuggler/pseuds/kadaransmuggler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Dalish might not be perfect, but the Dalish are trying, and Jessa Lavellan's identity is deeply rooted in her culture.</p>
            </blockquote>





	even if it breaks your heart

Sometimes, it was easy to anticipate friendships turning sour and tense. After the Temple of Mythal, when Jessa Lavellan walked from the stables to the tavern, she felt the anticipation of that moment rising, nearly suffocating her. She shifts her grip on her sweat-slick staff, digging the tip deeply into the soft ground, and she pauses at the base of the stairs. Her clothes are a pale imitation of the robes that Keeper Deshanna wore, and they are bright and green and new, but Jessa thinks that they will perhaps always be stained with blood. She sighs, something tugging at the edges of her thoughts. She should be using her magic and her staff and her hands to help and teach her clan, but she is here, in this shemlen world, and her magic and her staff and her hands do nothing but kill. She realizes there is no longer anything child-like about her, and part of her wants to cry. Instead, she stiffens her shoulders, accepting the heavy and hard weight of the realization and continuing up the stairs. 

* * *

 

"Makes the Dalish look like tits for living in the woods, though," Sera says, and the humor is bright and unmistakable in the blonde's eyes. Something tugs at Jessa's heart, and she barks out a laugh that is closer to a sob. 

"You do realize that I am Dalish, yes?" she asks, and the anger is hot and thick, pressing up against her skin. _We are the last of the elvhen._  

"Yeah, but you're all right. Besides, you're here now," Sera says simply, as if that fixed any of the injustices and indignities. How many times had Jessa been called knife-ear or rabbit by the shemlen she was trying to save? How many times had those very shemlen hunted her and her clan for sport? 

"For now, lethallan. But my place is out there, with my clan, remembering and teaching the history that we've lost. I don't expect you to feel the same," Jessa says, and she turns and walks out of the tavern sharply, her hands shaking. She hears the Well calling out to her from some deep, primal place within, and she thinks that perhaps not as much is lost as was thought. 

* * *

 

"Your face. The vallaslin. In my journeys into the Fade, I have seen things. I have discovered what those marks mean," Solas says, and there is that glint in his eyes because he thinks he knows something that no one else does. Jessa's face turns hard and defensive. 

"They honor the elven gods," she says, warily, watching his face. 

"No. They are slave markings, or, they were, in the time of ancient Arlathan," he says, and his voice is soft and gentle, like he's afraid she's going to shatter with the news. Instead, something within her hardens. 

"Keeper Deshanna said they honored our gods. That they were their symbols," she says, and she clenches her hands to keep them from shaking. 

"Yes, that's right. A noble would mark his slaves to honor the god he worshipped," Solas says, and Jessa is almost smug for a moment. 

"It doesn't matter what they were then. They're ours now," she says, defiantly proud. There is a savage, vicious thing lurking somewhere in the depths of her gaze. When he ends whatever soft and fragile thing that was blossoming between them, Jessa Lavellan returns to Skyhold with her vallaslin intact, and her anger frothing under the surface. 

* * *

 

Jessa Lavellan remembers her childhood, sitting around the campfires and listening to the hahrens tell stories about their past. She doesn't remember a time where their stories and legends were anything other than sacred and lost, dangling just out of reach. She gathers what wispy strands of them she can, and holds them tight against her chest. She had never imagined a time when she would be here, in the Fade, standing in front of whatever is left of Mythal. 

"You do the People proud," the old witch says, and Jessa takes those words and holds them just as close as those wispy strands of history. In later days, they will become a mantra. 

* * *

 

When Solas shows up again, he takes her arm and the mark with it, and he drags her faith and heritage and culture through the mud before spitting on it. Jessa is angry, defiantly so, and her lips curl back in a snarl. "May the Dread Wolf take you, _Solas_ ," she says, her voice laced with enough venom that he flinches. He turns and walks through the Eluvian, stooped over with the weight of her anger, and only his magic remains, eating up whatever is left of her arm. She wonders if there will ever be a time when others do not take from her. 

* * *

 

She returns to her clan battered and bruised with a missing arm and a broken nose, and she tells them the stories of the things she has learned. She tells them of the Veil and what it really is, she tells them of the true betrayal of Fen'Harel, and she tells them about Solas and how he plans on destroying their world, too. She gives them the new pieces of knowledge that had been lost before, and they gather them up and fit them carefully with the knowledge they already had. They are Dalish, purely and simply, and she would face down a thousand Corypheus's if it only meant they could keep that. 


End file.
